The unnamed sources, cited by DigiTimes, suggest Intel could even be forced to delay Presler's introduction, which they claim is scheduled for January, to give it time to squash the bugs.

Presler's not officially due to ship until Q1 2006, but Intel appears to have engineering samples out in the field to allow mobo companies to confirm the compatibility of their own hardware.

That timetable still leaves the chip giant room to put back the release and still meet its publicly announced launch window. It also assumes the stability problem arises from the CPU itself, not the mobo or a combination of the two. These are, of course, precisely the kind of problems engineering samples are sent out to expose.

Meanwhile, 'Yonah', the 65nm dual-core Pentium M chip, has apparently passed the appropriate tests, the sources claim, and is on track to ship later this year, just ahead of its formal introduction early next year. ®